Father's Mantra: I Am (Not) A Rock
Father's Day musings on the road from masculinity to parenting.
Of all the memorable awards I've received over the years — First Prize in 'obstacle race’, first grade; Consolation Prize in music, probably eighth grade; the lucky draw which yielded a book, middle school — my favourite of all time is this one:
My son gave it to me on 19 February 2020. It’s a piece of stiff paper which bestows upon me the 1st Worst Parent in the World Award 20201.
I can’t call myself a good parent. Struggling Parent™️ is more like it. But this award is actually proof that I got at least one thing right: that my boy is secure enough in his relationship with me that he can do things like this.
Some people might be tempted to say that this behaviour is actually an example of poor parenting. He hasn’t been taught to show respect to his father, they might say.
But to me, the fact that my son doesn’t fear me and is happy to ‘take my case’ feels like a minor miracle.
Strangely, all of this seems tied to—of all things—my understanding of masculinity, or how I interpret being a man, a mard, a purush. The more consciously I embrace and redefine my masculinity, the better I seem to be as a parent.
So this post explores fatherhood masculinity and how navigating it can lead to more conscious parenting.
It all starts, for me, with a song.
When I first heard the I Am a Rock, I was a pre-teen boy, hunched over a National Panasonic tape recorder with its not-so-pristine ‘mono’ sound. This was 1980s Bangalore. With me were Satyen and Arjun, my trusty cousins and frequent collaborators in all things fun and dangerous. Technically speaking, Arjun is my cousin’s son, but because he is just one year younger to me I think of him as a cousin.
On that day, the three of us were in the corner plot house in Malleswaram where my grandmother lived. We had no clue what we were listening to. The audio cassette probably had the name Simon & Garfunkel scrawled over it, but I can’t be sure. It had been left behind by one of our American cousins during a visit to India.
Today I would probably regard a cultural import from America with a jaundiced eye. I might mumble about the Americanisation Of Everything. But in those days baby, this was super cool stuff.
Besides, we three probably had nothing else to do in ajji’s house, having finished scouring the trees for mulberries or scrambling over the rooftops, or whatever took the fancy of our pre-teen brains. (Once, we broke into a room in an actual ruined house, which just happened to belong to a distant member of the family, and found several sealed boxes of bottles containing powder. We pretended it was treasure, until the powder — containing some unidentified chemical — gave us the severe itchies. We were told later on that the bottles were the result of some ill-advised manufacturing venture.)
I Am a Rock was the last song2 on the audio cassette.
Naturally we didn’t know the song titles and had little clue as to what the singers were saying. We had our own version of the lyrics, which we continued to use for years afterwards.
As a Bangalore-bred boy, I have played this guessing game with lyrics to songs in both English and Hindi. The other day for example, I learnt to my surprise that the lines of the Mr. India song Hawa Hawai are Bijlee Girane Main Hoon Ai (I have come to unleash lightning), and not Bijlee Ki Rani Main Hoon Ai (the queen of lightning has arrived) as I always thought.
With I Am a Rock, which quickly became a favoured song due to its catchy chorus, misunderstanding the lyrics wasn’t an issue—they were completely unfathomable.
The two-line chorus of the song is:
I am a rock,
I am an island.
In my imagination, the chorus was:
I am a rock,
I am anaiiiiiiiyaaaaa.
But the images the song title conjured up for me were magic. I could see in my mind’s eye a large rock jutting out of the sea with stormy waves crashing against it.
To me, this rock seemed strong, proud, and unyielding, qualities I admired and wanted to emulate. Every time I caught the song’s chorus here and there over the next few years, it deepened my conviction that being a rock was a beautiful and desirable thing.
Cut to 2020. I was 41 years old now. And I hadn’t properly heard the song since I was that pre-teen kid. Almost 30 years had passed. In this period, I had become angrezi-fied enough to ‘get’ lyrics, learned to play the guitar, played in a band, quit both the band and the guitar, left Bangalore, become a journalist, gotten married and had a child.
I had also had a mid-life crisis.
Now as my 40s were beginning, I was in post-crisis recovery along with my collaterally-damaged family and friends (who had, in the time-honoured tradition of mid-life crises, no choice in the matter), generally thinking about many things, including the idea that it is so so easy to be a colossal screw up. I was also beginning to think about how to make reparations. A big part of this was my masculinity. What kind of man, partner, parent, son and friend should I try to be, going forward?
One day in 2020, I picked up my acoustic guitar which my wife had begun playing. I began looking for songs to play. Because Simon & Garfunkel songs can be played by a single acoustic guitar, I gravitated towards them. I knew The Sounds of Silence. I kind of knew how to play The Boxer too — but not very well. What I was looking for really, was a relatively simple song to begin.
That’s when I stumbled upon I Am a Rock [YouTube lyrics video]. It turned out that with the help of a capo, and a few hammer-ons, I could easily play this song. It wasn’t that hard to sing either.
But the lyrics! Paul Simon, the chief songwriter and guitarist—it was clear to me now—wasn’t singing about the merits of being a rock, proud, unyielding and all.
Quit the opposite.
The song is about a man who is so burned in love and life that he retreats totally into himself. He fortifies himself against ever having human relationships again.
I have no need for friendship.
Friendship causes pain.
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain.
I am a rock
I am an island.
At the time of singing, the narrator of this song is in denial. He has perhaps not yet realised how lonely he is going to be one day.
I won't disturb the slumber
Of feelings that have died
If I never loved, I never would have cried
I am a rock
I am an island.
The more I practised the song, the more I felt for this unknown, fictional narrator. I was also determined not to become him.
At some point in their lives, many men discover that they’re quite lonely. In my case, I was surrounded by family and friends, but I had already started feeling the prickling of loneliness. I was capable of having intellectually stimulating conversations and I still had fun with people, but I had not had a deep emotional connection with my friends, especially my male friends and relatives, for years, perhaps decades.
I started reaching out to people, because I didn’t want to become a rock. I didn’t want to be an island.
With some exceptions, masculinity norms aren’t all toxic. In fact, just as there are tremendous pressures on women to conform, there are equally powerful pressures on men to toe the line.
To be strong and proud, and unyielding and firm are all important qualities — in their context. But they aren’t values to be adhered to all the time, no matter the cost.
So what norms of masculinity, must we keep and what might we discard?
Consider I Am a Rock and its old associations for me:
To be strong by oneself doesn’t mean that one has to know all the answers to life’s problems.
To be unyielding is useful only in certain narrow contexts, and perhaps not even then. It is better to be flexible. Think not rocks, but water.
To be proud doesn’t mean that one is expected to have to do everything by oneself. Asking for help is not a sign of weakness, but of strength.
My mantra used to be I Am a Rock.
Now it is I Am (Not) a Rock.
With all these thoughts churning inside me, my attitudes towards parenting changed too.
I still think my son should be strong (duh obvious!). But I also believe that he doesn’t need to be strong all by himself. He can find super-strength in relationships too, which is why I insist he stays in touch with friends from his old school.
I think he should be proud and unyielding, but I also teach him that being humble and soft are great qualities too.
And so on.
It would be too pat, too convenient to claim that a song changed my life. But it would also be wrong to say it didn’t.
P.S. While writing this piece, I ended up yelling at my son. I realised too late that a deep breath might have stopped the emotional explosion. I said sorry to him and then tried to lighten my own mood with a touch of humour: He’s going to need therapy anyway. Might as well give him something to talk about.
I don’t quite remember why he was angry with me or what I did to annoy him.
The first song on that mixtape was Leaves That Are Green. In between were Kathy’s Song, Richard Cory, A Most Peculiar Man, and my then favourite, We’ve Got a Groovy Thing Goin’. (The Sound of Silence was on the other side of the tape.)
You have got the flair....bravo..!
In your vulnerability and your honesty, you are indeed an excellent parent. Loved reading this!